While our common view of someone who's filed for bankruptcy is of a credit-card loving spendthrift, the reality is different:

Families with children, single mothers, divorcing spouses, displaced workers, the poor and people with expensive medical problems, particularly seniors, comprise the bulk of bankruptcy filers. The law's impact will likely be greatest in states with the highest bankruptcy filing rates: Utah, Tennessee, Georgia, Nevada, Indiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Ohio, Mississippi and Idaho, in that order, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute.

Anyone who's not taking a six- or seven-figure bonus on top of a comparable salary is should not get sick or injured if they want to avoid bankruptcy.

Since 2000, Harvard associate medical professors Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein, along with Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren and Ohio University sociology and anthropology professor Deborah Thorne, have been compiling data on bankruptcies in the United States. Their study, published on February 2 by the medical policy journal Health Affairs, found that between 1981 and 2001, medical-related bankruptcies increased by 2,200 percent, an astonishing explosion in a relatively short period of time. This spike far outpaced the 360 percent growth in all personal bankruptcies during roughly the same period.

In addition, the study uncovered surprising information about the affected population. While poor, uninsured Americans have long been the most obvious victims of a defective healthcare system, it's the middle class that suffers most in this case, accounting for about 90 percent of all medical bankruptcies, says Warren.

So, we can exhort folks to forgo their cup of coffee from Dunkin' Donuts in the morning because that will accumulate to a good two grand in the bank at ten percent a year (even though we're lucky if we get two percent right now).

Just don't get sick in those couple of years. Because that two grand won't pay for the bedpans at the hospital if you get sick and you don't have health insurance, or your insurance won't cover the majority of your medical bills.

While you're at it, don't get divorced, don't have a kid (or have a kid with medical problems), don't get old, don't lose your job, and don't spend more than half your net pay on housing--even if that's the cheapest you can get.

[L]egal experts say the proposed law leaves open an increasingly popular loophole that lets wealthy people protect substantial assets from creditors even after filing for bankruptcy.. The loophole involves the use of so-called asset protection trusts..For years, wealthy people looking to keep their money out of the reach of domestic creditors have set up these trusts offshore. But since 1997, lawmakers in five states - Alaska, Delaware, Nevada, Rhode Island and Utah - have passed legislation exempting assets held domestically in such trusts from the federal bankruptcy code. People who want to establish one of these trusts do not have to reside in any of the five states; they need only set it up through an institution located there.

Anti-abortion protestors who harass, intimidate, and assault clinic workers and patients. They can still hide behind bankruptcy to avoid paying fines.

The Senate voted 53-46 to defeat an amendment that would have prevented anti-abortion protesters from using bankruptcy to avoid paying fines or civil judgments for blocking entrances to abortion clinics. The provision's inclusion in a Senate-passed bill two years ago led to the bankruptcy bill's downfall in the House of Representatives.

Now all you folks who voted GOP this last election, aren't you glad that the growing profits of the Fortune 500 banks, credit card companies and insurance conglomerates are being guaranteed and protected by federal legislation? Aren't you glad poor families can be driven to destitute homelessness should one of them (gasp) dare to get sick?

Is this what "red state voters" meant when they talked about moral values???